Alexander Pyhalov has announced the release of OpenIndiana 2016.10, an updated version of the UNIX operating system which evolved from the abandoned OpenSolaris project. The most notable changes are the switch from GNOME to MATE for the "GUI" edition, move from GRUB to the FreeBSD bootloader, and no more support for i386 architecture. From the release notes: "Hipster 2016.10 is here. This time we provide three types of pre-built images - GUI images with MATE, traditional server install images and minimal images which we stripped down to be small yet useful. The most notable change for users is migration to FreeBSD Loader. After installing new bits, upon the next beadm activate, the new loader will be installed instead of GRUB. This improvement allowed us to modify the text installer so that it can newly install the operating system on RAIDZ/mirror ZFS pools. Intel KMS (based on Oracle's version) was ported to OpenIndiana by Martin Bochnig. Current implementation has some rough edges and supports only 6th and 7th generation of Intel video adapters, but is clearly a giant step forward for desktop users." Download the "GUI" (with MATE 1.14) live DVD or USB image from here: OI-hipster-gui-20161030.iso (1,487MB, SHA256), OI-hipster-gui-20161030.usb (1,789MB, SHA256). Also available from OSDisc.

The OpenIndiana project, which is a continuation of OpenSolaris, has released a new version of the community-maintained operating system. The new release offers a number of improvements to package management and includes several package updates to such desktop applications as Firefox, Thunderbird and VLC. "New nlipkg zone brand was introduced, which behaves like old ipkg brand (i.e. it doesn't check child and parent images for consistency). It's possible to convert ipkg zone to nlipkg one. To do so, install system/zones/brand/nlipkg, change zone's brand to nlipkg and remove /var/pkg/linked inside zone. Closed sysidtool which could be used to set initial system parameters on first boot and initialize zone's configuration was replaced with sysding. All other packages from closed admin incorporation were also removed..." This release will be the last OpenIndiana to fully support running on the 32-bit x86 architecture, according to the release notes. Download: OI-hipster-gui-20160421.iso (1,369MB, SHA256, pkglist)

Alexander Pyhalov has announced the release of OpenIndiana 2015.10, the latest update of the distribution originally forked from the now-defunct OpenSolaris operating system: "So, after half a year we have a new ISO image. We synced IPS with the Everycity version, which includes Oracle updates and fixes necessary for IPS to work on illumos. Two major changes from previous IPS shipped with OpenIndiana Hipster - now we have Python 2.7 IPS version (in addition to the Python 2.6 one) and the linked image is the default zone type now. IPS knows about the zones and enforces some restrictions - for example, now GZ's publisher list should be subset of NGS's publisher list. Also distribution constructor was updated to use Python 2.7. Other changes include some preparations to support non-GRUB boot loaders. The text installer now creates separate file system for /var. We also included the text installer in the GUI ISO images. The main issue with GUI installer is that it is written in C and there's no one supporting it. The text installer, written in Python, is easier to maintain, so it gets more attention." Read the rest of the release notes for further details. Download: OI-hipster-gui-20151003.iso (1,233MB, SHA256).

Ken Mays has announced the availability of a new OpenIndiana release, "Hipster" 2015.03. The new version provides updates to the GNOME 2 desktop, Intel video drivers and system libraries. "First of all, most evident changes were made in desktop area. We've updated X.Org server and libraries, which allowed us to incorporate some important security fixes from Oracle x-s12-clone and Debian X.Org. Also we've moved much more closely to GNOME 2.32. Most packages were updated to this level, excluding packages which either have a lot of specific patches (like GDM) or just dropped some significant functionality (like Cheese, which dropped HAL support in version 2.32). Not everything has gone smoothly. We had to drop trusted desktop support during update. I believe nobody seriously used it under OI. The most annoying thing is that updated Xorg and Intel driver require some DRM updates, which are still not ready. So, if you have Intel video card, either pkg freeze X-incorporation and X.Org, or use vesa driver." Further information is available in the project's release notes. Download: OI-hipster-gui-20150330.iso (1,237MB, SHA256).

Jon Tibble has announced the release of OpenIndiana oi_151a8, a new pre-stable build of the operating system originally forked from OpenSolaris (after Oracle's decision to discontinue the project). From the release notes: "OpenIndiana oi_151a_prestable8 aka oi_151a8 is a bug and security fix release with some big version bumps and also the first rebuild of the JDS in the pre-stable series. This is an ISO release. This release has changes to ZFS and kernel/libc interactions that mean child zones will not work with global zones upgraded to a8 until they are brought in sync to a8 themselves. Other changes: bump Illumos to hg:14087:9919574e3322 git:7256a34efe; backout sgml util removal for now; include beta vmxnet3s driver; bump Apache to 2.2.25; bump Autoconf to 2.69; bump BIND to 9.6-ESV-R9-P1; bump OpenLDAP to 2.4.35; bump OpenSSL to 0.9.8y; bump PHP to 5.2.17; bump Samba to 3.5.21; bump Wireshark to 1.8.8...." Download from here: oi-dev-151a8-live-x86.iso (843MB, SHA256).

Alasdair Lumsden has announced the release of OpenIndiana oi_151a, an updated version of the community fork of OpenSolaris, now with support for Kernel Virtual Machine (KVM): "OpenIndiana oi_151a was released on 14th September 2011, exactly one year after our first release, oi_147. Our latest build brings a wide variety of enhancements, including being our first build based on Illumos. Notable changes to the kernel and core userland since OpenIndiana's oi_148 release includes KVM, the open source kernel-based Virtual Machine, as a basic virtualization solution along with the QEMU package. This KVM port includes virtualization extensions for Intel VT. Using KVM, a user or system administrator can run multiple virtual machines running unmodified x86_64-based operating system images for Linux, BSD, or Windows images. Each virtual machine has private virtualized hardware." Read the release notes for further details. Download the live DVD image: oi-dev-151a-x86.iso (802MB, MD5, torrent).

Albert Lee has announced the availability of a new development build of OpenIndiana, a community fork of Oracle's OpenSolaris: "Project OpenIndiana is pleased to announce the next development release - oi_148. This release has seen a lot of improvements in documentation and processes to enable more people to contribute releasing more development knowledge to the community instead of being locked in a small number of people's heads. Outstanding issues to be aware of: globalisation across the OS is still broken; Brasero is broken due to an updated cdrecord. Fixes and improvements since oi_147: bump consolidation versions to 148 where available with bug and security fix backports; backports from Illumos; bump NVIDIA driver to 256.44; fixed l10n in Firefox and Thunderbird; added PostgreSQL packages; fixed man pages...." Read the release announcement and release notes for more details. Download: oi-dev-148-x86-20101216.iso (876MB, MD5).

3CX Phone System is a specialist, Debian-based Linux distribution designed to run a complete unified communications platform. The 3CX client, included in the distribution, can also be installed separately on most hardware as well as the cloud. It provides a complete open standards-based IP PBX and phone system that works with popular SIP trunks and IP phones. It will automatically configure all supported peripherals and it also comes with clients for Windows, OS X, iOS and Android. The ISO image includes a free license for the 3CX PBX edition. The ISO images contains the standard Debian installer which installs a minimal system with the nginx web server, PostgreSQL database, iptables firewall and Secure Shell. Options not relevant to 3CX have been removed form the distribution. Download the installation ISO image from here: debian-8.6.0-amd64-netinst-3cx.iso (246MB).

For complete privacy and anonymity on your desktop computers and mobile devices, use a personal VPN from Private Internet Access, the award-winning, no logs VPN service named PC Mag.com Editors' Choice.